The Zero to Five Identity Crisis

There’s a tipping point in every new project when the conversation shifts from “Should we do this?” and “Am I willing to participate?” to “Which shade of blue should we use in that diagram?” 

This isn't a metaphor. Every new team and company I've joined or started in the past 25 years has, at some point, debated which blue to use.

The Ways of Working Operating System (WoW OS) initiative is ambitious. A growing group of dedicated volunteers is shaping the system, and we've recently crossed the Shades of Blue threshold.

We're now starting to tackle tougher questions, like:
What makes one idea distinct from another?

Let's explore this using the Zero to Five (0 to 5) technique as an example.

What’s that? 👉 Download this 0 to 5 Guidebook to learn more.

If you're just here for the guide, enjoy! Zero to Five is one of the nine meeting techniques I unabashedly love. You should absolutely add it to your repertoire.

And if you’re mostly here for the how-tos, feel free to skip the rest of this article.
Because we’re about to get geeky.

Ready to get your collaboration geek on?! 
Let’s go.

🌰 WoW OS in a Nutshell

The WoW OS initiative is collecting expertise regarding effective ways of working in an open platform so that we can:

• Quickly find useful practices.

• Identify overlaps and gaps.

• Iteratively improve approaches.

• Clarify how multiple frameworks relate.

• Connect organizations with experts based on substance, not branding.

Sounds handy, right? It will be!
But first, we need to collect and organize all that expertise.

We know that humans work best together when there's a clear structure, and that the human brain loves a good pattern.

So, we've established high-level categories for organizing our ideas. We're calling the smallest building blocks Elements. This is where we'll publish individual practices, methods, design guides, models, e.g., this stuff:

Now, it's time to add Elements. Steph Gioia, who leads the spiritual twin project either/org wisely warned:.

As many studies show, however, multiple discovery happens all the time, and true creativity is exceptionally rare.

And in many ways, every idea is unique. But sometimes the differences are mostly cosmetic. Minor variations shouldn’t get separate entries.

That’s why Steph recommends training curators—people who can help sort, categorize, and occasionally say: “That already exists.”

Which brings us to the big question…

What Counts as a Variation?

Let’s use the Zero to Five (0 to 5) method as a case study.

I first wrote about it in 2014 and have since trained approximately 1 billion people in the many ways this technique comes in handy.

Here’s how I described it back in the Lucid Meetings glossary.

I copied my 2014 definition verbatim for two reasons:

1. So you know what I'm talking about and,

2. So you can see the first potential source of duplication.

Now, did you notice the caption below the graphic? It says to "Make sure to clarify what 0 to 5 means for your group." That implies that you might define 0 to 5 differently.

We assume the starting question will change, because groups will need consensus for different decisions. This makes 0-to-5 a go-to technique for everyone from software teams agreeing on estimates to boards approving investments. But is it still the same technique if you change the question and what each rating means?

The ROTI (Return on Time Invested) variation does just that by asking people to raise fingers to rate an experience, with 0 = it was terrible and 5 = best thing ever.

Then there's this gem from a recent training:
“What about people who don’t have hands?”

First, if you know you're meeting with handless folks, use a different technique! Seriously.

But should you only learn about an accessibility challenge in the moment, don't fret.

I see all of these as variations on the same technique. When we add these variations to the WoW OS:

• We can list different names as aliases, or "also known as."

• We can supply a set of sample questions and ratings that work well with a 0 to 5 scale, showcasing variations.

• We can share alternate ways for people to post their ratings, accounting for different ability levels or settings.

I would advocate for a single entry in the WoW OS catalog covering all of the above, and I'll contribute the content from the guide as a start.

When Is It a Different Technique?

People learning 0 to 5 often ask, "Why not just use a poll or survey?" 

Good question. This is a change to both the interaction AND the channel, and more importantly, a change in how the group can use the results.

Polls provide anonymity, making them feel safer to some, especially in larger groups. But anonymity sacrifices the social synchrony and real-time visibility that make 0-to-5 powerful. Polls generate charts to review later, but they don't spark immediate dialogue or alignment.

The purpose is different.

I also see techniques like Kaner's Gradients of Agreement and Roman Voting as distinct.

Gradients of Agreement, developed by Sam Kaner and colleagues, asks participants to share their level of support one at a time using a 10-point scale. It’s designed to surface nuance and prompt discussion, but takes more time and usually requires a visual guide.
(Just to confuse things, here’s a description of Gradients that uses a 6-point scale and suggests collecting replies in a poll. And we wonder why folks get confused!)

Roman Voting is fast and informal: thumbs up to agree, thumbs down to disagree, sideways for abstain/meh. It’s easy to run but forces people into broad categories. That’s fine for low-stakes choices (thumbs up for pizza!), but less useful when real concerns need air.

Given the WoW OS Element categories shown above, here's how I would organize 0 to 5, Gradients of Agreement, Polls, Roman Voting, and others like them.

And yet... this is far from perfect. Check-ins are used to see how folks are feeling today, which is clearly different than checking for consensus on a decision.
But you can use a 0 to 5 check for both, so...

Judgment calls will need to be made.
WoW OS curators will have their work cut out for them.

Testing Our Way to Living Taxonomies

Blue is not teal, nor is there a perfect boundary between them.
The same holds for our many wonderful ways of working.

By examining how a representative technique supports groups across four dimensions—purpose, content, interaction, and channel—we can begin making informed distinctions.

Of course, those four dimensions only tell part of the story. We will also want to describe structured interactions using additional metadata, like:

• Time per activity

• Materials needed

• Accessibility

• Cultural context

• Project lifecycle phase

• Complexity

• and more.

Detailed metadata won’t tell us whether two approaches are the same, but it will help us understand when and how to use them, and for whom they’re most appropriate. With enough of these descriptors, we’ll be able to group and discover techniques based on similarity and situational fit, not just structural form.

As I worked through this article, a final insight emerged:

Our classification challenge doesn’t resemble the work of librarians or patent officers nearly as much as it mirrors the dilemmas faced by biologists. While librarians work with clean metadata and patent officers seek to make definitive pass/fail calls, our landscape is far more organic.

In our ecosystem, the same technique might evolve independently, show up with a dozen aliases, and serve wildly different purposes depending on the context. Some tools, like group rating methods, live best in a real-time group setting. Others, like visual thinking frameworks, can be used solo, with groups, in the moment, and over time.

Like biologists, we must accommodate mutation, hybridization, and environmental adaptation. We'll need to examine structural dimensions—not just names—to guide classification. The living nature of the work we do and the organizations we serve means that clarity here won’t come from enforcing limits, but from nurturing a system flexible enough to allow for emergent patterns and structured enough to highlight that which helps us thrive.

We must never devolve into the imposition of rigid boundaries. Instead, we must aim for just enough curation to make solutions discoverable, variation encouraged, and practice easier to share, adapt, and evolve.

What You Can Do With All This

0 to 5 is a fabulous, versatile team ritual. Grab the guide, and get in touch if you’d like to schedule a one-hour hands-on (or rather, hands up!) practice session.

The WoW OS project is picking up steam. Learn how you can get involved. 

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